Linux Mint 11 for digital painting

22 october 2011

Warning :the method presented in this article are too old to be applied now. Use this information at your own risk. But ! if you want to configure a Wacom from command line , you can find here precious informations, that's why I don't archive this guide yet.

Here are my notes, to transform a Linux Mint 11 Katya fresh install into my ideal production-ready machine on my studio, with all apps I need. I tried to write it with details for almost Linux beginner. Also straight forward, most actions are condensed to be 1 lines copy/pasting.

I 'll keep this config for a long time. Mostly new solution can't fill half of my needs. A reason more to publish my note and share my treasure.

screenshot gallery :

Note :all was tested and written for Linux Mint 11 main Gnome edition.

All of this informations are not meant to be compatible with other distribution or other version,

please don't comment if it's not working in another release, and do it at your own risk.

System modifications :

Note : if you have a Gfx card, Install proprietary driver , a pop-up propose the installation of restrited driver at startup of a fresh install , follow instruction , then reboot.

Note 2 : To use the code here , open a terminal ( Menu > terminal ) then copy paste this each line by each line ( with Ctrl + C to copy the selected line but Ctrl+Maj+V to paste in a terminal ; or the auto method : select the line with 3 mouse click and paste directly with one mouse wheel click -simplier- ) confirm when needed with typing 'y' then enter, or type your password when asked.

Switch to gnome classic

Log-out , at login screen, click on your name, then in the menu who appear under choose Gnome ( No effects ) ( menu on the bottom of the screen ) , then log in with your password.

then to not make future Gimp update overwrite your Gimp-painter, open Menu > Package Manager ( Synaptic ) , in the quick filter , type 'gimp', click on the package, then go to the menu 'package' and activate 'Lock version'.

---[update 18/12/2011] ---Lcms2 : Krita switched totally to the library liblcms2 - faster, more stable, etc... but not provided by defaullt Linux Mint 11 package. So, to get it, you will need to compile Lcms2, newer distribution don't need it. - go here : http://sourceforge.net/projects/lcms/files/ then download the last version of the sources , the *.tar.gz version- extract it , then paste the content into your ~/source-to-compile/ folder created before- open the lcms folder with your terminal

• then log out your system , and re login. Krita should launch if you click with your file explorer ( nautilus ) on the "/home/<yourusername>/source-to-compile/calligra/calligra-inst/bin/krita" icon.

• To fix KDE apparences, and have a compact theme :

sudo apt-get install systemsettings qt4-qtconfig qtcurve

Launch qtconfig ( Alt+F2 , then type it , then enter )

and in apparence, select Qtcurve , tune the palette and font to your taste

launch systemsettings ( Alt+F2 , then type it , then enter ) and go into 'Application Apparence' for advanced config ( color, icon size, icon style , more UI colors ) . Just remember their is overlap of features between qtconfig and systemsettings , but even if qtconfig have less option, it will have last word.

Note : at each 'build' ( when you launch the script ) you will be updated. Also a new version ( folder ) will appear under your /opt/gimp folder. Think to clean it a bit sometime of old builds ( right click on /opt/gimp-razor/ , open as administrator , then delete old builds with 'suppr' on the keyboard ... Read the number of build like this : year - month - day - hour - minute - seconde ... ex : 2011-10-21-14-13-55 , for now I edit this article ).

Note : You may need to refresh thumbnail cache to make this take effect, go with your file explorer in your user folder, press Ctrl+H to unhide the folder of custom preferences, and delete the folder .thumbnails ( it will be regenerated )

Tablets Cintiqs : Calibration & dual screen ( nvidia twinview )

Krita running on a Cintiq, dual setup with Linux Mint 11

• Cintiqs behaves like a simple tablet over a screen ( intuos3 or intuos4 depending of the model ) , for both recognitions of hardware it's usually ok but for more information about supported hardware read the official wiki : http://www.linuxwacom.sourceforge.net ).

Update :

• an updated Wacom driver is necessary to support dual screens with nvidia twinview , to update the driver do :

Note : To calibrate the Cintiq, unconnect other monitors, and do the following in single screen mode :Note 2 : replace the 'device' with your device name, if you don't know it read the start of this Wacom part again.

xinput_calibrator --device "Wacom Cintiq 21UX stylus"

Click the red 'target' with your stylus , be precise , try to adopt at this moment your default position in front the Cintiq .

Xinput_calibrator is not able to write down the values , but will return the information in the terminal :

calibration data: 327, 86436, 374, 65171

understand the value like this pattern [ minX maxX minY maxY ]

• Xsetwacom will be able to set this settings. We will add this xsetwacom rules to our ~/wacom.sh 'start-up script' with the help of Area. Be carrefull, xsetwacom Area change the value order in this pattern : [ minX minY maxX maxY ]

Hey David, why you did not make a whole team of developers, or just you, and create a distro or just a live cd? something like ubuntu studio, but for painters. I think this can be a good idea, you have a good understanding of scripting, etc.

this post really helpful especially about gimp-razor.Thanks to Stéphane R. Richard, who made that awesome code. Anyway David, i agree with Giovanny Arce, but it's not only 'you', how about 'we' make distro for floss digital artist. It would be awesome to rejoin with other who has same passion.

Hey thanks & merci all for the feedback. I updated the page with the infos asked by anonymous about the PressureCurve option. I might continue to update this page in the future with other tips. My curve don't make the device less sensitive, it makes a bigger contrast in the range between low pressure and hard pressure ; with this I'm better able to manage around 6 strokes with only varying the pressure of my stylus.
Just a feeling I like. With the Cintiq , I keep the feeling 0 0 100 100 ( constant ) , so default , but I do less pressure on my stylus ( probably the fear to broke the LCD screen under, or scratch it )

Making a new Linux CD distribution with good setting from the scratch sound a good project, but surely out of my capacity and personal target. As many of you, my main passion is to paint but also to transmit my passion of painting . The systems is just a tools, and gathering this infos as above is a real pain to be true when doing it alone , and I learned it the hard way ; tested so many different things with deceptions. For the moment, I'm satisfied if a guide like this can offer a way to skip those painfull moment for a more beginner, or a casual Linux user.

By the way, I hope the content of this page will attract attention to someone who want to merge them as default in a distribution as Ubuntu Studio would be a perfect place to got most of those things already present inside the DVD.

@Juan Ochoa : yes, I do as I own one :) I updated the article for you with my Cintiq setup ( and added a photo ). Good luck in your switching ; take time and patience, and you 'll get the result you want.

@Marco : Thanks for the links , but I really feel this can be out of my abilities and time interest. By the way , here I believe more in way to transform recent distribution ( Fedora / Ubuntu / Mint / Debian ) for my needs. A software layer + a different theme and name never success as a real new distribution. I will try to fight for having ora/kra/xcf ( even PSD ) thumbnails as default in distribution , I'll wait for Wacom gnome panel (gnome 3) to be ready with more option than in 3.2 ( a good start by the way ) , and maybe I will end doing a zenity or *.py script to automate the install of PPA or package ( a list with checkbox ), and make the bleeding edge developpement version stuff in another single script to do all. Imo, that's sound a better plan than storing DVD's , building website for distro, having bugs of release, make a DVD 64bit and 32bit and all work around... sound hard ! ;)

Thanks for another very helpful post! I notice that you include Inkscape and I was wondering if you (or anybody else, for that matter) are able to get pressure sensitivity with your tablet in Inkscape when using the Calligraphy tool? I haven't been able to do it under Linux Mint 11. Thanks!

Your blog and tutorials have been an incredible resource for those of us brave enough to forge ahead with Linux and open source. Thank you so much for this latest comprehensive guide. I was already doing quite well using Mypaint and your workflow from before. This guide puts all of the pieces together and helped me get even further. Compared to all of those Photoshop/SAI users, I no longer feel like my choice of tools is holding me back. Now I can forge ahead and improve without the fear of having "inferior" tools. I can't thank you enough!

@Matt Jordan : Thx ! Pressure works fine in Inkscape, but you have to 'activate' the device for it, as you do for Gimp. In file>Input Device ; then in the new panel check box of your 'stylus', 'cursor' and 'eraser' . Then press save. Restart Inkscape, use Calligraphy tool , enjoy ! ;)

@icius : Thx, and yep after all those years of switching from windows into this obscure Linux, with Krita 2.4 / Gimp 2.8 and Mypaint 1.0 soon , I feel like a new area will open for digital painters. Also the future 3.4 gnome wacom panel ( version 3.2 have basic function) and fix around Ubuntus and Gnome 3 ( for next LTS ) will make a good mix for sure.

@Ramon Miranda : Thx ! that was huge to post it indeed. I also did it for every of my 'students' , the one of my DVD's and the one of todays and this week workshop. Thanks my blog system to finally got WYSIWYG. Before that I was writing all in pure html , and it was impossible to make complex guide without headach of html tags.

Hey David, thanks for the reply. I probably should have mentioned that I've tried all of that to no avail. I've actually used Inkscape for years and haven't ever had this problem before, namely that no matter what I do or enable, pressure just doesn't work. It's frustrating, as Inkscape is my favorite drawing program. But since it works for you, maybe I'll back up my work files and try a fresh install and see what happens. Thanks again.

hi david, i saw you yestarday at viewconference in turin, and after your workshop i had try to pass on linux, but i still got some problem whit mypaint :(.
when i run it from terminal, it return this output, and mypaint still not run:

@Andrez : Oh, thanks to was on workshop ! for Mypaint try to go on your /home/*username* folder and look for the '.mypaint' folder ( Ctrl + H ) to hide or unhide preference files. You have an error in the preference. You can delete this folder '.mypaint' without risk if you don't made custom brush or got some preferences you want to save. Mypaint at launch will rebuild this folder with default settings. Hope it will work.

@Marco : Good to finished almost the install. Don't hesitate if you find something to improve this guide. For Compiz icon, yup, compiz stuff is pretty working weirdly , I didn't tryied AlchemyOpenGL and I learn with your message about his existance. The fact most of the Alchemy features were ported into Krita makes me prefer to use this last one. But I will spend a look and good to know the tips. Maybe this bug is to report to the Alchemy dev team by the way.

Probably is more a problem of this version of Compiz. Since AlchemyOpenGL works on Natty and in previous versions.
Right now my problem is that I can't rotate the screen with xrandr. I'm googling and it looks like a xorg-server bug that has been fixed. Also when I maximize a window it takes the two monitors, while Ubuntu Natty wax maximizing only in the screen I was at the moment.
Maybe if I install a newer version of xorg-server I solve both problems, but maybe I see other bugs like I had in Gimp.

ok AlchemyOpenGL works if I set no effects. I don't know what is the advantage of the OpenGL version, maybe having less lag with the brush? Though the standard version works fine. If mirror works on Krita I think is enough and I don't need alchemy.

At the end I think I won't use compiz. It creates too many problems especially with graphic programs. Though I'll miss some plugins.

I still have the problem with dual monitor. I upgraded xorg-server then downgraded again. The only advantage was that I could rotate the screen...but Krita wasn't working with the tablet so I downgraded.

Ok now I tell you what I use. I don't know how helpful will be for you:

Also I use a lot Shotwell. I download a lot of pictures that can be good for inspiration and I multi-tag them. For example I press the tag bw and I see all the pictures that I have in black and white. It's excellent because is fast and works with huge archives. Well it's a default program in Ubuntu so probably it's not big news.

Then Gnome-do, really useful to open programs really fast pressing Super+Space instead of using a menu.

When I draw I go in preferences -> Windows and I choose "Select Windows when the mouse when the mouse moves over them"
So I don't need to get the focus, with the pen can be annoying.

I have a script for the OLED screens on the intuos4 and it is placed in /etc/rc.local. So it starts automatically.
I just follow the instructions for the LED on this blog and then I write these lines in rc.local (change USERNAME with yours). It follows this order because I'm lefthanded and indeed there is the --lefthanded option:

The last line has a 0.5 value if I'm in dual screen, so the graphic tablet will work only on the left screen, because if can work on both you have to use half of the tablet for the left monitor and half for the right, which is not very nice to use.
If I want to use only 1 monitor I run the script rotate2 where the value is 1.

Compiz stuff:
I used xrandr to rotate the screen in portrait mode pressing a button on the keyboard, but here on Mint I can't make xrandr work. Btw the bindings were created inside Compiz Config Manage -> Commands (it's a nice gui for bindings if you hate writing scripts).

If you use compiz and you don't want the close button on the gimp's tool bar or to be able to resize it (like it is on photoshop) you can go in Window Rules and press on the + near Non resizable Windows and Non closable Windows then Grab and select the toolbar.

Another nice feature of Compiz is Screenshot. You can select a mouse+key combination. Then select an area on the screen and automatically you have a screenshot in the directory you chose in the Screenshot settings (I use Shift+mouse right click to select the area)

Widget Windows. If there is a program that you want to see as widget, can be whatever program you want, just go in Widget Windows, click on + and then grab...click on the program.
After that if you press F9 (or the key you configured) that program will appear on the dashboard (I started to use it a while ago, but now I don't do anymore, but maybe someone can find it useful, like loading a picture with a cheetsheet? mmm I don't know)

The last one I think is a useful Compiz plugin is Grid. As keys I use CTRL+ALT+ numbers on the numpad. They let you move the windows as they were like on a grid. For example CTRL+ALT+numpad 7 you get the windows in the top left corner. CTRL+ALT+numpad4 it's half screen on the left.

On the intuos4 pen I use the button up and down to increase and decrease the brush.
The wheel for the zoom. The mouse inside to have zoom 100%
button 5 for the grid and the rest is quite obvious.

David, finally i read all the info, and i am very happy with all the changes that i have done on my PC. i installed Faenza Icons, better for artists, non distractive look. And install also the ORA XCF and KRA preview thumbnailer, really good change.
Also i have improved the Nautilus thumbnails .No more "white border" but "nice shadow".
Now i am investigating Wacom stuff. to map my buttons on my Intuos 4 S.
Thanks a lot for your efforts. i stay tuned

While it is an aside I would also recommend that people install the Plug-in Registry for GIMP. While it may not apply to digital painting, they do expand GIMP & GIMP-Painter in very good ways that may apply to a production digital artist. In production anything that simplifies a task or effect is of value. It is part of the standard Ubuntu Universe Repository and should be available by default on all Mint and Ubuntu based systems.
sudo apt-get install gimp-plugin-registry

I wonder also, if the extra Wacom configurations you mention will 1: Work with a Bamboo Fun CTE-650 or not 2: is it any advantage over the auto-configuration that I get right now with Mint at work and Ubuntu Studio at home where it seems to be 100% functional just plugged in? I am probably missing something important. I am rather new at this.

Additionally you have been a great inspiration and teacher for me. Your tutorials, DVDs, and just examining your work and learning your work-flow has enabled me to expand my skills and abilities by light-years in just the path month. In fact prior to a month ago, I was just a 3D Artist and had never really trained or done 2d work both by hand nor digitally. You have been, in effect, a mentor for me during this past month and I have achieved things I never thought I could do with no limit or end to growth in sight. So thank you, for sharing your work with the community.

@Marco : Here too at the end I don't use Compiz. Too much issue for little effect and ergonomy trick not worse it for the moment. Thanks for sharing more tips ! I like the one with dropbox to share .gimp2-6 preferences between multiple computers.

@Ramon Miranda : Cool if those infos helps, thanks to be around and to comment ;)

@Nathaniel Schultz : Plug-in Registry for GIMP is already in the line to install Gimp-painter from ppa :) I also like it a lot. For the tablet , you're right, most of the time it's fully functional without any installation. What I do here is just xsetwacom lines to customise how behaves button. One of my favorite customisation is to put 'Ctrl' on the stylus button , to pick color with it. So it depend of taste.
Many thanks for what you wrote about my training material and the infos I try to share online. I really do it to make a stronger community of open-source digital painters, and so increase bug reports, artworks, testing, and so developing too ... but also to make other share my main passion for free : enjoy creating pics :)

@Andre : Thanks to add it on the comment ; but I try here to keep focused on digital painting tools to not expand to much the post .By the way , Libreoffice Draw is pretty usefull, as a speed Desktop publishing RGB for PDF presentations ; and all my administrative task ( table / writer ) use it . I will have a look at it for sure and try to install. If it's pretty straitght forward and possible to reduce it as a 1 line update, I will add it fore sure.

Hello. Has anyone successfully configure multiple stylus in Linux? I would like to be able to switch between my Wacom airbrush with wheel and the grip pen. I have spent almost 7 hours trying to setup the airbrush, but Linux does not recognize the tool. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you!

@Jason : Hi,
For multiple input as multiple pen , the driver is not adapted for the moment ( it was by the past ).
It's planed normally to have this feature back in future. For more informations , bug report and discuss with the linuxwacom project team.

Thank you for answering my question, David. I hope the team will reactivate this feature soon. I will just have to work around the issue for now. I, also, want to let you know that your art is incredible. I am always inspired by your work. Thank you for posting the fantastic tutorials, too!

What makes Mint so great that you chose it over other OpenSource OS? Why you don't use Ubuntu or Fedora?

I'm struggling with Ubuntu 10.10. Trying to get Intuos4 L working. It seems that I don't understand the way this OS works. For me it would be easy to return to Windows or buy a Mac and happily use my Wacom pad without problems. But I really don't like Windows and Macs are overpriced.

Also I feel sad that as an artist I'm spending so much time in studying how I can configure my Wacom drivers. I would rather just use my time in painting or sculpturing, doing those things I like. But as known, there is no such things as free lunches. In Linux case you will have to work and study hard to get something work right but you will get it without money. In Windows and Mac case you will have to pay to get working things but you don't have to deal with hacking.

@Jason : It sames other Linux distribution are not affected by this, only Ubuntu based as far as I understood from a talk on the mailing list with Krita devs.

@Tom Wright : Many thanks for your feedback ! nice to know it worked for you. Cintiq makes me got white hair to find the way to calibrate and run it with dual screen. I'm happy my guide can help other to not have to test many random things before succeed on a result. Thanks !

@Andre :Yep, I'm also exited by the wise solution Linux Mint team take for the 12 ; I think I will be able to work on that. It also seam the Linux Mint community is growing more and more.

@Konstantin : My choice for Mint maybe deserve a new blog post to can answer fully. So stay tuned, I will blog post about it for sure next times.
Intuos4 is normally plug and play since Karmic Koala ; so 10.10 should be working ok. Customisation via xsetwacom is may be difficult at first , but learn how to manage the tablet independently on the long term, so it 's good. Also, new graphic user interface exist on KDE for Wacom ; and it progressively come on Gnome for 3.4 , ( a first one exist on 3.2 shipped with 11.10 ). For sure next year life on Linux will be improved for digital graphic tablet owner.

Yeah, you are absolutely right (look at distrowatch.com it's more popular than Ubuntu right now^^). I installed the Mint 12 RC today and it has strange Interface/Graphics problems... . MGSE (?^^) looks not finished to me and not worth to upgrade yet. Btw. my boot problems are gone...Yay! XD

@Andre : oh good news for distrowatch :) Here I really think I will stick to Mint 11 till half 2012 ; even when 12 will be finished ( for systems , I never try the RC or Beta ) , I will wait few more month over it ; all this technology changement are cool , but users always suffer a lot of it. Thanks for the link :) I think I will try in a virtual machine ;D just to follow

@amin :
I don't own this tablet, but the last paragraph on the official wacom documentation seams to answer exactly what you ask :http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/l … let_Set_Up
A script to bind to a shortcut keypress ( via menu > Preference > Keyboard Shortcut ) to turn it on/off

By the way. If you simply want to turn off all the time :
it's like this in your xsetwacom script ( like on the article ) :
xsetwacom set "$DEVICE" touch off
(where $DEVICE is your device identification )
Good luck

@Jason : Hi Jason, unfortunately I tested it ( some weeks ago, not very actual tests ) and it's well based on Oneiric, so the bug is still here and won't be corrected. Ubuntu team said it's a Gimp 2.6 problem , and Gimp team said they 'll not continue to support 2.6. I'm planning for my next system to move to another distribution ; Fedora maybe. But for the moment , I run LM11 on all my pro computers. When library will start to be too old to compile some new stuff ( ex ; GTK3 Gimp ) , I ll move.

checking for GLIB - version >= 2.30.2... no
*** Could not run GLIB test program, checking why...
*** The test program failed to compile or link. See the file config.log for the
*** exact error that occured. This usually means GLIB is incorrectly installed.
configure: error: Test for GLIB failed. See the file 'INSTALL' for help.

arf... I took so much time to make this article, and only 2 month after ; some libraries and ppa start missing from the repository ; it's became harder to compile Gimp ( glib ) and Krita ( lcms2 ) . All is done on Linux to make old version obsolete very fast...
Sorry, for the moment I have no specific solution ...

David, I think the era was in me using LinuxMint 12? I installed 11 and so far the install is going well...I'm at the "qtconfig" portion of the install. Will let you know how it works. I was a little surprised to see you have to configure your wacom with each use?

@Michael R : Hi. The problem with Mint12 is the Gimp-painter and Xorg bug who made Gimp-painter totally unusable with tablet. A patch was done by the Gimp team member Alexia Death, and it's really nice. But it mean I would have to compile Gimp 2.6 from scratch, apply the gimp painter patch , and the xorg patch... I need a bit of time to see if library wise it's still possible to do so...
In the mean time I contacted Hajime Mizuno , the maintainers of Gimp-painter ppa, to encourage to apply the patch to the version for Oneiric ( no answer for the moment since month ).
Linux Mint 12 have a particular way to handle Gnome 3 ; wasting also a lot of vertical space with 2 bars... Gnome 3 is still also beta and offer not so much of comfort in customization and for professional workflow than Gnome 2 ; and I heard Mate ( the gnome 2 fork integration ) is buggy.

I'm studying seriously the KDE desktop and Gnome 3 ; over a Fedora base ; a Opensuse base and a Linux Mint debian edition on a virtual manager. For the moment, I like the KDE Fedora spin.

@David REVOY : Thanks for the response. I'm completely new to LinuxMint and that's only because of this extremely well laid out setup you have provided. I'm an open source supporter, but being a novice to Linux, I've had hard times setting up the OS/Hardware profiles. I've always used Fedora and and feel far more comfortable there, so I'm excited to hear that Fedora has a spin that is grabbing your attention...I would really like to have this type of "support" with Fedora.

Would be great to have you in the hangouts over at G+! Then I can really pick your brain apart. >)

hey david great tutorial. im having some issues tho when im downloading some of the packages, like the with gimp 2.7 it fails on 3 toward the end and never installs the app to be able to actually run it. so i was wondering, you think maybe you could make a package .iso of your system and upload it? it would save alot of ppl who want to copy this system alot of time

@Itzcuauhtli : Hi, first this page for the Linux Mint 11 concern only this outdated version, and it's not compatible with recent Linux Mint or Ubuntus ; it would be like following a Windows 3.1 tutorial for Windows 7.
Second, DA Muro is a proprietary application. Even if you can access free, you can't access to code. So, it's the responsability to D.A to answer your problem, not mine or Linux developpers.
Third, driver for Intuos 5 where just done for Linux. To use them you will have to grab the source on Linux Wacom and compile them.
I hope it will help.

:cool:
Many thanks to share all that stuff. Compare to you, I m realy a lazy guy.
maybe one of the last thing to add to the perfect swiss army knife for illustrator is Makehuman.. ?? http://www.makehuman.org/